This university student built his very own functional (sort of) Batsuit

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Holy c&@p, Batman! A university student has decided to make his own functional Batman suit ... and what’s really interesting about it is that it actually works. Well, it won’t take a bullet, but Jackson Gordon claims that it can withstand punches, machetes and baseball bats. He knows, because he's tested it.

This is not Gordon’s first Batsuit effort; he has built one before, but it was only an aesthetic endeavour. This time he wanted to make one that could not only stop a solid punch but also allow him to move (he has a black belt in kung fu).

The young man started building the first prototypes last September, but he wanted to take it further, making it a more ambitious project. So he launched a Kickstarter campaign to help him raise money for supplies like Kevlar and silicone molds, and in 30 days he had amassed the tidy sum of $1,255 for his Batsuit, which he finished in time to wear for Katsucon, which ran from Feb. 13-15.

Of the entire costume, it was the helmet that gave Gordon the biggest headache. It was the hardest part to build, and the costliest. Gordon explains that he first had to create a model of the helmet with fragile, flexible plastic in order to make a silicone mold. Then he poured a more durable plastic in said mold in order to create the wearable, durable helmet.

The finished helmet weighs around 3 pounds, while the suit weighs about 25 pounds. You’d think it was heavy stuff, but not so much. “It sounds like a lot, and when you have it in a bag over your shoulder it weighs a ton, but when you are actually wearing it, you barely feel it,” Gordon said, adding that one of the most important things in creating this awesome Batman suit was to make sure he was comfortable and could move easily. “If this were to inhibit my movement, it would be completely useless.”

He also added:

“One of the things about the design process that my teacher tells us over and over again that I’ve learned in my own process but now is more so even true, is that designing is never finished – you either run out of time or you run out of money.

“So I finished this project last week, and all this week when I’m done my homework I’m sitting in my dorm like, ‘What do I do with my life?’”

Have a look at Jackson Gordon’s awesome Batsuit, and let us know what you think.